Monthly Archives: February 2014

Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is created (such as an idea, a joke, an artistic or literary work, a painting or musical composition, a solution, an invention or a etc.). I would add, or a self.

I am a story and a chapter and a line and a word and a letter and a gesture of pen upon paper.

Most of my DNA is masked but the hidden parts map like the rhythm of language.

Science cannot understand the human blueprint.

I am static and moving and inert and dynamic and fierce and frightened.
90% of all of my thoughts are replayed stories of the old wars in old landscapes.

90% of all decisions are from the reptile brain which decides for me 7 seconds before it appears on the conscious screen.

Am I part of my body, riding in my body, above my body?
Whose voice do I hear?

Who speaks to me?

Is this a lesson?

Where is the centre? Where is the fullness? Where am I?

I reached for the wall in the hospital because I saw a polar bear.
I was a toddler. I did not know why I saw this creature.

We revise our histories. We go back and play a scene again with subtext script.
We color it in, give it a sound track, interpret it for the audience of self.

Was the bear a guardian spirit? A hallucination?
How am I to know without rewriting the story?

Within the lies of anxiety that we listen to like siren calls there lies a place. It can be reached. It is what Deluk the Buddhist nun told me is “the garden”.

It is in the centre. It is in the centre of the past, the present, the future. It is full of no time time.What happens in this garden is magic. What happens in this garden is no time time. It is no story, no narrative, no question.

My story, my childhood was violent, threatening, chaotic. I was taught fear. I was taught to fear the environment, to fear death, to fear to speak, to fear all formulations of what I was.

My confusion did not help creativity. Neurosis does not help creativity. The lizard brain is not creative, it is looking to survive.

So how did I find myself. Here. Sometimes sitting in the garden of no self. I have learned to watch my mind. I have learned to know when I am being 6 or 10 or 15. I have learned to embrace the shadow self. And for all of these incarnations which appear I have learned to follow Thich Nhat Han’s advice and sit with them. I sit with whatever is presenting like one would sit with a baby. I hold it. I comfort it. I come home to myself.

And since I have come home to myself, I am clear. I am clear in what I say. I am clear in my art.

We are all given gifts. Much as the Fairies in fables show up at the birth. They stand next to the baby and they bring gifts. The universe has given you gifts. When you are no longer afraid, when you are no longer letting your lizard brain tell you the story, when you are no longer letting your past create the hologram of your present you simply use your gifts. It is easy. It is what we are here to do. Without ego, self judgement, without waiting for applause or condemnation, we just use our gifts.

Be curious, transform

And that is when we truly come home to self. We sit in the garden and blossom. It is why we are here.

The holding in place a space
my body inhabits so solid this anchoring self.
I am an animal of culture and inculcation.
The impact geography of my childhood,
my alliances, my institutional experiences
sometime trap.

upcoming poetry readings

I saw the Tom Cruise film recently called OBLIVION and it gave me pause.

First, yes Tom’s various manifestations as characters in movies are all just a clone of himself. So many exact reproductions of the hyper-kinetic energy of his personality invested with a script build around it and differing costumes are given an enscripted name.

Next I moved my mind over to the idea that always draws me. I am amazed at how much I dwell in simple three dimensional feed back, tethered to a reality construct that I cannot release.

One of the spells she weaves is of proximity. “You are better off submitting to local galleries,” she tells me. “You will find a love who lives close to you.” “You will achieve the artistic power you deserve by reading poetry locally, by submitting writing locally.”

Even after reading dozens of books and articles about Quantam Physics and the illusion of competition; even after taking classes in science of mind for two years; even after my four Shamanic retreats and daily meditation my mind locks onto appropinquity, juxtaposition, contiguousness, adjacency.

the romance of desolation draws the broken to it

The surface terrain tells us that having a lottery ticket one number out from the big win means we are close. It translates to interior self talk that someone in a black Toyota dying on the highway means one must be careful when driving his or her Toyota on that same highway.

There is so much primitive grief embedded in the concept of nearly real. If it is next to me, it is more likely.

Lately I have been working with my attachment to the Proximity Myth.

There is another dynamic which is arising. However deeply I feel something, however far into my body, my essence, my heart, my imagination the more likely that energy is to manifest in my life.

So standing next to someone who seems to hit the jackpot is not the answer. Neither is it the answer to believe that a local gallery is more likely to appreciate what I create. Locality is not reality.

finding the bright steady centre

My work is to see my mind bind and start cutting the threads. When do I stand up fully in who I am? The work is now, for me in this time, to find the work. The work is now, for me in this time, to use discipline and reckless abandon equally and trust that I do not need to see the road to travel upon it.

Gumball
slot machine world
take a chance.
If I can touch the thing
and find the slot
Bingo baby
Payout
filling both my hands.